Coming from experience, you will only need an inexpensive laptop for college. As previously said, fuck macs. I recommend buying one with an SSD. An SSD will allow you to have <8 second boot time, which is fucking crucial when you need it.

But yah, AMD would be a good place to start. They have quality laptops at a cheaper price due to them being relativley unknown compared to giants such as Intel.

i have a macbook pro from 2010 and mac hate and whatever but it's a nice computer. the construction is nice, the touchpad is nice, screen is nice, everything work and all. But yeah, If I could go back and do it again, i'd build a desktop for gaming and get a cheap laptop and just run ubuntu on it so i wouldnt even have to buy an OS.

Do you guys even call customer service? what goes wrong with your stuff that you cant fix yourself? If it's a new part you need you can replace stuff.

I'm sorry bud but a $500 windows desktop will NOT out last a $1500 MBP. MBPs by far are the best constructed laptops on the planet. If you're pissed you can't upgrade, buy a fucking desktop then. My 2 year old MBP is just as viable as any other computer on the market right now and ive used it heavily for 2 years. It will last me at least another 2-3 years no doubt, maybe longer.

Anyone I know who's had a cheap windows laptop (< $500, i've had probably 10-15 people i know who have got cheap laptops) have either had theirs break and buy a better laptop (either more expensive windows or MBP) or they just buy a new shitty laptop every 2 years.

To get a laptop that is just as good as a MBP, you have to spend about $1000 on a windows laptop, end of story. Im not saying mac is better, im currently typing this from a windows desktop, MBPs just have superior construction and their components last for years.

I've got a $600 HP laptop that I bought in 2007. It just crashed on me and it's a simple fix that will cost $80 and I can do myself. It's not a rigor on your machine thing, it's a knowing how to use it kind of thing. Unless you need the industry-specific functionality of a Mac (even then there are other options) it's absolutely unnecessary to spend literally three times the price for sex appeal.

You've gotten very lucky/are very tolerant of problems. I had two friends buy the same laptop on sale (they spend like $300 but I believe it retailed for $500-600) and within a year, both of their screens had broken, both computers were literally worthless. They both got some fixes done, i think through warranty and one guy gave up after about 2 years and got a MBP and my other friend had it for almost 3 years but it just died one day and he gave up.

Granted, they only spend $300 so it wasnt as big of a deal, but the design and construction of the MBPs is spot on. People still use original intel MBPs from 2006 and they run flawlessly.

Yes, how you treat/maintenance your computer makes a difference. A hard drive crashing is a big deal to someone who has no idea how computer work and they get charged $300 to fix it on their $500 computer. For someone who knows whats up, it cost $80 for a drive and you fix it.

Im not trying to convince OP to buy a MBP, i just hate when kids like the one I quoted come in and shit all over apple because they're so butthurt that they cant afford one. No one who can afford a MBP buys a $500 windows laptop.

Just saying if this laptop of yours if for anything else than gaming a Macbook Pro/Air would definitely satisfy your needs, not neccecarily your wallet, but still. I've never been happier with my laptop ever since i acquired a Macbook Pro. Not saying that you can't get other good laptops, but I'll obviously reccommend somehting i've experienced as 'good'.

im content with my Acer Aspire. unless you can handle it dont get a laptop with windows 8 shits annoying. dont get a mac if you want to get downloadable games. Dell, Acer, and HP make good inexpensive laptops.

it's not even that. people just hate it cause lots of people have them.

i'm with eheath, apple laptops are well constructed and theres no doubt about that and because of they're expensive. My 2010 macbook pro has had zero issues so far. You can get other well constructed laptops that aren't as expensive as an apple one but they're not going to be cheap either, not like a $500 dollar difference. My girldfriend has some asus laptop thats really nice, it's very thin, metal, has an SSD, light. It's a nice portable computer. I believe it's an asus zenbook of some sort and I like it plenty. I don't think it was cheap though.

But i'll say this, i've never used a better touchpad than on an apple laptop. plastic ones suck and even some other glass ones aren't as nice. don't know why.

I don't give a shit what computer OP buys, I just want to throw this out there...

The only people who hate on "z0mg thuper expensive" Macs are the people who

A. Can't afford them
B. Have never even used one
C. Don't give a shit either way, but love to jump on any bandwagon rolling by at the moment

$1500 isn't even a lot of money. How long do you plan on using a laptop? Five years or so? That's less than a dollar a day, not including maintenance. I'm sure you could cut $.80 out of your life daily. Get a grande instead of a venti at Starbucks.

It's true, there is a lot of hate from kids who just want to spit hate, but you can't deny that the amount Apple charges for the lowest end of their MBP line is crazy. 13 inch screen and pretty sad performance starting at $1200. I'm not denying that they may have great construction and they can last long, but you can get great PCs that last a long time for much much less than that.

And I don't think I got lucky because it's not my first PC that I've had last 4+ years.

As we have all seen play out in the past, there's no place for agreement between Mac and non-Mac users and that's totally cool. To each their own as long as you're happy with the decisions you make. Macs have their place and I will give them that they are good machines that hold their value. But by the same token of your hate on the butthurt kids, it drives me nuts when some dumb bitch who literally only surfs the net and listens to music on her $2,000 MBP starts screaming at me about PCs being inferior and then not being able to explain why her precious machine is actually a quality piece.

In summary, there really isn't a wrong decision. Just do you research and be smart about how you spend your money OP.

This is pretty accurate. But saying that $1500 is not a lot of money is just douchey. It is, but totally worth it for a quality computer with a quality customer service. Get apple care, sick of your mac? getting slow? pour coffe on it and get a brand new one.

I don't necessary hate on macs, but I highly prefer windows. Only forthe reason that I have been using windows for my whole life, and am very comfortable with the os, and don't see the reason for me to switch to Mac when I don't have to. I am perfectly content with my windows comp

Also op, check out the Samsung series 7 chronos. I have it and it is a very nice laptop that will suit your needs

To those saying a sub 500 buck laptop is not worth it I would just like to say I have been using a 450 windows laptop for the last 5 years. Before I got my desktop I was running all my 3d work on it including all the animation I did. I even did all my animation work on it for salomon when it was 3 years old. As long as you don't abuse a laptop even a cheap one will run fine and last a long time. And if all your doing is school work and browsing the web it is absolutely pointless spending any more unless money is no object to you.

I swore off windows for awhile, especially seeing my friends struggle with windows vista. I bought a desktop last winter and have been using windows 7 for awhile and I like it. Yes, it was a $1400 build so its pretty fast ha but still, I don't mind windows it works just fine. The ultrabooks these days are getting close to MBP quality but at that point you're spending $1200+ so I'd rather just spend a little more on a MBP.

Oh my god. It still haunts my dreams. I used to be a computer tech and they deployed that OS to our entire campus. Pretty much every legacy application we had failed on it and as a result of that we had hundreds of users who would either come swearing and nearly tearing a hole in the universe because we no longer had their app, or they would literally kick the computers. I had to go through one-by-one and install patches for the ones that maaayyyyybe had some support drivers for Vista. Literally the worst year of my life. As a result of it we downgraded all 490 machines to XP and reinstalled all the necessary apps.

Not to threadjack, but should i get a new laptop for college since my current one is about 6/7 years old? I know absolutely nothing about computers and their components.

I currently have Dell Inspiron 1525. It runs fine, gets a little laggy here and there. Gets bad when I play music and surf the internets. I plan on using it for playing music, watching videos, writing papers, just the typical college student stuff.

That's personal preference man. If I were in your position I'd take whatever money you have set aside for a new laptop and just hide it away. Then when your Dell craps out (guaranteed it will happen exactly when you need your computer) it's no biggie and you can just go buy a new one. Just make sure you're backing up your stuff.

not to hate too much on macs, but fact is that i can get at least two comparable "other" laptops for the same money.

if you take care of it for a long time, go buy a mac. but things happen sometimes and then you lost 1500 instead of 500 (if you take the cheapiest semi-legit laptop)

but i really hate this almost religious debate on macs. fact is that most people wouldnt buy a mac without that sneaky apple and the nice design. DEAL WITH IT. not implying YOU (who are currently reading this) did it, but the majority is ticking like that.

you can go both ways and be disappointed and happy equally. people should need to stop going apeshit in these discussions. but if you need a cheap laptop for interwebz and office, go fucking get a 400$ one, its probably more than enough.

in all seriousness, i read that 3 times, 1st time i thought what the fuck is he on about, read it again and thought, this fuckbag has to be kidding, read it once more and decided calling you a fuckbag wasnt good enough - sick-as-aids

I, for one, have no problem admitting that part of what drew me to Apple was the sleek design. Why would I want to buy something I use every day and hate looking at it? It's like people who pretend they don't care about the graphics on their skis as long as they "perform well." Given two (almost) identical park skis, I will bet almost anything people would buy the one that was either 1. made by a brand they already like or see as the "popular" brand or 2. looks better, even if that ski is a bit more money. It's just the way shit works. People seem to get stuck on the Apple thing though because it's essentially them vs every other PC running Windows.

This, I sold a 3 year old mbp for like $1k or something? (super old first gen intel version) and then had another 15" for a year and solid for like 200-300 less than i bought it and no my 17" i could probably sell for 400-500 less than i bought it for and its 2 years old.

Also, I dunno who said apples customer service sucks, but thats just wrong IMO. My first laptop had about $1500 in repairs over 3 years and it was all free. Took my computer to the apple store and it was always fixed within a day or two. Apple Care is second to none.

Or you could just get a real laptop for a third of the price and the same hardware and just... i don't know... learn to fix and maintain laptops yourself? It's easy. And you're not overpaying for your computer which is nothing but a nice chassis. There are literally 0 things that are unique to the MBP that you can't find elsewhere in a laptop half the price.

I bought a Macbook Air 13 inch for $475 on EBay and I love it. It really is so much better than any other computer I've had. To everyone saying people use Macs because they're trendy is right. But personally I usually hate Apple. I have a droid, so much better than any of you kids that are talking shit about Apple's iphones. Buy quality, not what's cool. Macs just happen to be cool.